


Fond Ships

by lasergirl



Category: Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-02
Updated: 2014-08-20
Packaged: 2017-10-08 15:49:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/77241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lasergirl/pseuds/lasergirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joe, Dex and Franky have a complicated relationship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_**Sky Captain: Fond Ships 1/3**_  
**Title:** Fond Ships 1/3  
**Fandom:** _Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow_  
**Pairing:** Joe/Dex  
**Rating:** PG  
**Notes:** There's always more to what meets the eye. (An exploration of the Joe/Dex/Franky triangle in 3 parts.)

Sometimes allegiances went deeper than words, deeper than blood or relations or emotions. Sometimes allegiances just _were_ or were not, no contest, no arguing. The line had been drawn, for Dex, a long time ago. Before Franky, before Polly, before even his own misguided sense of self-preservation had kicked in, he was there.

Dex - shiny, complicated Dex, with his radio waves and comic books and bubblegum, hell, he still had cellotaped Victory Hero posters on his bunkroom walls. And Joe had long ago learned that that was Dex, and that was the way things were. He'd be mad to try and challenge it. (And the fact that despite his placid appearance, Dex knew eight kinds of hand-to-hand combat and all of Joe's most ticklish spots.)

Because Joe had fallen, fallen when he meant to soar, and found he liked it. Dex talked in a language he tried hard to understand, but the very _physics_ defied him. Even when it was very simple; boy meets boy, or boy meets unmovable, stubborn object called Dex. Boy meets wall. Boy meets boy over crisp hospital-cornered sheets under the painted cartoon eyes of a legion of Victory Heroes. Meets slick mouths, bitten lips, groping fingers. Meets the thing he'd least expected to find.

Joe dared not even speak its name, though could have drawn it in steam in reverse on the mirrorglass bathroom wall. Would have been there in a heartbeat if he was needed. The world could have fallen to pieces around him and he wouldn't have seen it.

He named his first Dex-built plane 3V-01 - there was no encryption of D-E-X that the genius wouldn't decode - the only way he knew how to say it, in a language he never uttered for fear it would destroy him. Had the chance and never took it, let Dex pass with a fond thought. Two ships in the night, maybe, fond ships. They never got complicated enough for regret. Though perhaps that in itself was Joe's only regret.

[PART TWO](http://www.livejournal.com/users/coelogyne/17673.html)   


Questions? Comments? Feedback always appreciated.


	2. Chapter 2

Then came Shanghai, Nanjing, and an avalanche of complications that threatened to bury them both. First it was Joe, and he didn't come home nights, to share a humid, sticky bunk with Dex because the night briefings would go until the small hours of the morning. Joe crawled into bed often only a few minutes before Dex would crack his eyes open, his brain already humming up to speed. Quick licks, a few fractured words were all that passed between them. Then - oh.

Then there was Francesca A. Cook, in all her commanding glory. The Manta Group was running its own operations in conjunction with the rest of Albion Detachment - the Union Jack stencilled proudly on anything that would stand still long enough. He should have known to take five giant steps backwards, but oh no, not good enough. Kissing Franky was better than kissing Dex.

At least, she talked less, which made the kissing even more satisfactory - better contact with mouths pressed open - and Joe never ended up with an abandoned wad of fluro-pink chewing gum under his tongue. On three occasions he made it as far as her bunk before saying a word. All of Franky's pinups were of airjets.

Disaster, then, after all of that. There was this girl. In a war zone like that, hellish smoke and fire and the noise of seven circles of Hell tearing open, there was this girl in impractical shoes and a hat like Robin hood with a feather in it. She fancied herself a reporter, and had the questions to prove it. Joe learned not to stick around Franky when she showed up; a surefire way to go down in flames. Dex shouldn't have to see Franky plastered all over Joe, not when his only comfort was the hope and rememberance that eventually Joe would come crawling back into bed for a peck on the cheek before sleeping. No; he couldn't break him.

The girl - Polly - couldn't get past Joe's perimeter, his defenses wouldn't allow it. Already treading on too-thin ice, he tiptoed past the sleeping monsters of jealousy and betrayal. Let Franky go on thinking she was wearing him out; let Dex imagine the security briefings and midnight runs. Let it all go on.

Joe was expecting the evacuation to go swiftly, to run without a hitch and be commended at the end of it all with a medal or something appropriate. He'd salute Franky and give Dex the congratulations he deserved. But everything went to the seventh circle; Franky - and Manta Group - took a brutal hit in a retrieval, the Intel Unit moved Dex to a secure bunker, and the 3V-01, the Dex-prototype first echelon fighter went down on a routine mission, and Joe had to sit the rest of the war out, six months with chains on his ankles.

Ace's luck.


	3. Chapter 3

Rotting in an internment camp wasn't exactly his idea of a good time, the cold, the fleas, the inhumanity of the whole thing. It gave him a lot of time to think, though, and a lot of time to swear that if he ever did get out of the whole mess alive he was going to start over and do things right for a change.

More difficult than it sounded, after six months. Five weeks into the ordeal, Joe figured he'd never see freedom again, and five months into it he knew he never would. By the time operatives scaled the barbed-wire fence and found him huddled in a corner of the bunkhouse, he'd plain given up hope, little more than bones and ragged skin wrapped in the remains of a man.

And things had changed so much in those six months - time that would have passed in freedom like so much drawing breath - when he looked at the wreckage of his life he could see only loss.

There was Franky, hospitalized comatose from the raid that nearly killed her and only now starting to come back. Joe went to see her and found Dex there, holding her hand and reading Victory Hero comics out loud. Half her face was masked in white gauze, but her expression told Joe to turn around and keep walking. Running.

In a way it all made sense, the one mathematical division of the selves that kept them all alive and whole. Joe was dangerous to love and he knew it, could never make a promise that he swore to keep, when death stalked him so closely from behind. He smiled and let Dex take his leave time at Albion Group, watched him build the airstrips and jetfighters and Manta gear. Let Franky take him, fully take him, and was bitterly glad it had never come to him to make the choice.

Because what could he possibly offer Dex in return? A few illicit moments stolen between the minutes and hours of the day, hidden away in dark corners and never whispered aloud. It was hardly a way to live. And Franky, damn her, she knew.

Joe knew when Dex came back and the embarassed look on his face spoiled everything Joe wanted to say to him. They could be friends, it said, but never lovers, never again. Joe knew not to ask after Franky, knew enough in his empty skull not to let things get in the way. Loved desperately, deep down inside and locked it away from ever showing on his face.

Ironic; the second echelon fighter, a retrofit with plans from Manta, was amphibious - Joe knew it was some kind of subtle love note, I-told-you-so and he named it Polly just to revenge himself.


End file.
